Weekly Round-Up: Yoga Everywhere, Your Ideal Day And Summer Festivals

by Puja Gokarn

Nobody knows how yoga came into being. The earliest propagator of it was Patanjali and he would be amazed to learn of the few gazillion adaptations of the practice that exist in the world today. There is Hatha yoga, Vinyasa yoga, Bikram yoga, prenatal yoga, power yoga, restorative yoga, yoga for weightloss, yoga for mindfulness... the list goes on and on.

Regardless of your particular yoga practice, everybody can perhaps agree on one thing – yoga is a great way to keep the mind, body and soul happy and healthy. This past week we, at Z Living, took advantage of International Yoga day to celebrate yoga in all its forms and practices.

Join us in our celebrations of yoga goodness by revisiting the posts from this past week...

All you need to do is share a photo of your favorite yoga pose in your favorite yoga location. Inspired by the sweeping vistas of Namaste Yoga we'll pick our 5 favorites to be featured and we'll send the posters a tote bag and DVD.

Pilates for Yogis
Nine years into her Ashtanga practice, when Dani Katz’s spine freaked out on her, she was faced with one solution – Dude, don’t ignore the core!

Being a third series Ashtangi, she wasn’t expecting to discover that she lacked core strength. But we’ve known her to find some amusingly simple solutions to life’s major problems. And she combated this one with her usual common sense and shares it with us with her classic illustrations.

“Pilates is a core-based practice that demands a deep and intimate connection between the practitioner and their belly. It’s what allowed me to heal my back, and to inhabit my body in an infinitely more supportive, sustainable way after the great spine collapse of 2009. Still, I am a yogi at heart. I like to flow, and to sweat, and to Ujayi breathe my way through my morning prayers, and so it is that I have merged the two into a super compatible tag-team practice,” says Katz.

At Z Living, we know that yoga is more than a workout, it's something to incorporate into the everyday in order to achieve a higher quality of life. So we took up one of its four branches – Karma Yoga and decided to practice it for ten days.

Karma Yoga is the path of selfless good deeds. But one of its main principles is that it’s not just acts of kindness or service – it’s making sure that all your actions are good. There are a lot more defining features of it that we came across every one of those ten days. Overall, it was one emotionally satisfying journey that made us feel free and pure. Read our story on it this weekend and then start putting your own version of Karma Yoga into practice so you can embrace its fulfilling experience.

Get A Life You Love By Crafting Your Ideal Day
Speaking of a higher quality of life, no two people have the same definition of a quality life. Emma Bathie, one of our writers, gifted us a post which made us confront a very hard-hitting question this week – what is your definition of a quality life and how close are you to living it?

She says, “Most of us ‘create’ our lives on autopilot, without taking the time to think about how we truly want to live and feel. We spend our existences on the Groundhog Day hamster wheel until a crisis wakes us up in a cold sweat. That's when we realize there's a freight train speeding and screaming through our heads to the paralyzing question, ‘How Did I Get Here?’” Her solution to this existential moment is an overwhelmingly simple one – craft your ideal day and live it in order to manifest your ideal life. Now, we’re inspired into starting our Monday like never before.

Top Arts And Cultural Festivals To Explore With Kids This Summer
For instance, your ideal day could include being at an outdoor festival with your family. And we agree with you completely. There’s no better way to breathe in the fresh summer air and get the whole family active than heading out to one of the many outdoors festivals happening this summer.

Before you roll your eyes at how impossible that sounds, we’ve culled together the best ones that should make you and your family keep coming back every year for more.This weekend, make your plans to be at any of these fun, cultural events to start living your ideal life asap.

What could be better than a little bit of family yoga time in the outdoors with live music as your soundtrack? And could we have better prepared you for the best weekend imaginable? That’s okay. You can thank us later.